Voting

A number of cities(e.g Berkeley), states and countries (e.g Mexico's SSB tax, Chiles SSB and soon marketing controls and food package front of package label) will go into effect. Rigorous evaluations of the efforts will provide some sense of their potential to effect food purchase and dietary pattern and ultimately cardiometaboiic changes. Serious rigorous independent evaluations are needed to learn if these options--pushed
...more »

We must learn what we can from the natural experiments not only in the US but globally about both the effects of these efforts on food industry behavior as well as household and individual food purchases and dietary patterns and subsequently their effects on obesity and key cardiometabolic outcomes. This requires serious rigorous teams of scholars to utilize a combination of commercial data sets on food purchases, individual diet, body composition measures of obesity and fat composition and biomarkers.

Feasibility and challenges of addressing this CQ or CC:

These efforts are occurring and will be accelerating across many countries in Asia and Latin America. At the same time many cities or states in the US are moving to implement limited sets of key changes. There is a pressing need to learn if these efforts truly will matter and what changes would be needed to enhance their impact, if any. Finding large-scale regulatory ways to reduce improve our diets, prevent/reduce the prevalence of obesity and all the diet and obesity-related NCD's is critical.

Name of idea submitter and other team members who worked on this idea:
Barry Popkin

Voting

What is the role of lymphatic system in normal function of the heart? Do dysfunctional lymphatics contribute to heart failure? Do lymphatics have a role in recovery after MI? It has been reported that lymphatic vasculature transport HDL during reverse cholesterol transfer. Do lymphatics have a role in atherosclerosis? What is the contribution of lymphatic system to asthma or COPD? Does the lymphatic system contribute
...more »

Understanding how lymphatic system contributes to normal physiology of heart, lung, blood, sleep systems will help also lead to new approaches for treatment of heart, lung, blood, sleep diseases.

Feasibility and challenges of addressing this CQ or CC:

Basic understanding of the development and hemodynamics of the lymphatic system and reagents to study the lymphatic function are available.

Lymphatic vasculature is essential for fluid hemostasis in the body, collects and returns the protein- and lipid-rich interstitial fluid to blood circulation, and also involved in immune cell trafficking and inflammation. Given these important physiological roles, function of the lymphatic system is expected to contribute to normal physiology of organs and its dysfunction to major diseases. There is very little or no information how the lymphatic system contribute to health and diseases of the cardiovascular, pulmonary and blood systems, and there are many unanswered questions. Answers to these questions may lead to new approaches for treatment of major HLB diseases. Main challenge is to get heart, lung, blood, sleep investigators interested in studying the contribution of the lymphatic system to heart, lung, blood, sleep health and diseases.

Name of idea submitter and other team members who worked on this idea:
NHLBI Staff

- Affordable Care Act (ACA) includes both general and explicit provisions that could narrow the health disparities gaps through implementation research.

- Can leverage and build upon current research partnerships that exist between government agencies and health care delivery systems to address questions of major public health importance

- Opportune time to employ implementation research addressing health inequities through non-traditional research partnership with sectors such as education, state and local government, transportation (built environment), penal and re-entry systems (health risks and disparities), ministries of health, and for-profits, foundations, and non-profits with health care focus.

Challenges:

- Risk of disagreements and friction among partners and management with different priorities

- Synchronization of timing for decision making

- Achieving partners’ concurrence on decisions that provide the most cost effective solutions

- Time needed to establish trust among partners that do not routinely partner to address health inequities

- There are limited resources dedicated to fostering Public Private Partnerships

Name of idea submitter and other team members who worked on this idea:
NHLBI Staff

To extend our knowledge of the pathobiology of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders and enable clinical investigations that advance the prediction, prevention, preemption, treatment, and cures of human disease.